Time is Luck: "The Beach Bum" (2019)

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Time Is Luck is a column exploring films that are like John McClane in Die Hard 2: Die Harder — wrong film, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

"One day I will swallow up the world, and when I do, I hope you all perish violently."

-Moondog

I can't fathom a world that "The Beach Bum" exists where it wasn't some instant cult classic. It is filled with cameo killers like Isla Fisher, Martin Lawrence, Snoop Dogg, Jonah Hill, Zac Efron. Set in the soiled paradise of the Florida Keys - smashing together jaw-dropping sublime turquoise waters, buxom, beautiful (often topless) women of all shapes and ethnicities. Gangs of literally toothless bums who've chosen the most spectacular place to get loaded and hustle for the next alcohol or drug-assisted comatose state. It features a performance from Matthew McConaughey that fulfils that perverse part of your soul. You wish that when the cameras stopped rolling on the set of "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" that McConaughey relaxed and released his inner Moondog. Vulgar poetry, opportunistic sex acts and blowing plumes of green smoke like a steam train.

If you follow Mr McConaughey, you know that he's one to partake in the consumption of the 'green.' I've personally been quietly cultivating a wish that Moondog is his alter ego. A few years ago some snaps showed McConaughey and "True Detective" co-star Woody Harrelson fraternising like surfy stoner bros and I took them as evidence to his inner Moondog. It's not the case. McConaughey's frequency is sure as shit unique, but the truth is stranger, but what actor's "truth" isn't?

I grew up in a beachside town of Killcare, on the Central Coast of New South Wales (about an hour north of Sydney). In this little country town, blessed to occupy a slice of the glorious Australian coastline, stories of famous people were rare. A member of my family was an internationally renowned and beloved sportsperson, so a lot of people would reflexively tell me people they knew were famous. It's a weird short circuit to bonding. Somehow in one of a million conversations I have through school, I heard that McConaughey was an exchange student in a school about 40 minutes from mine. I was watching films from someone who was once considered a "local" results in strange internal cheerleading.

Man, you're hoping to see the film or the series be great. There were a lot of "Sahara" 's before you get to "The Lincoln Lawyer". At the culmination of the McCon-aissance period, with the conclusion of the undeniable all-timer of a show "True Detective" and the Best Actor Oscar for "Dallas Buyers Club", there seemed to be a universal consensus that his run was over. "The Sea of Trees", "Free State of Jones", "Gold", "The Dark Tower", "White Boy Rick" and "Serenity" are the run of films that followed "Interstellar". Cue the crying gif from "Interstellar".

Skipping ahead, we arrive at Guy Ritchie's "The Gentlemen". Ritchie's return to the geezer gangster genre is executed with such precision, self-awareness and haggard mileage that's arguably the best film he's ever made. Central to its conceit is the outsider marijuana king-pin, Mickey (McConaughey). A prodigious mind with the determination and grit to monopolise the English weed industry for decades. Not a return to form, rather a form to return. McConaughey's performance is like one of those moments where you grab a great jacket off of the rack, and you sling it over your shoulders only to marvel that it fits like it was tailored.

In between is a chaotic and committed performance. The nearly indescribable sunset tones, olive bare skin, delicately nurturing a joint and hanging suspended from makeshift hammocks in the rigging of a once functional fishing boat is Moondog, McConaughey’ successor to Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) from "Inherent Vice" and The Dude (Jeff Bridges) from "The Big Lebowski". For Moondog, finding the truth is not finding a toe or a girl; it is dredging the poetry out from the most desperate chasms of his soul.

Writer/director Harmony Korine's bent coming of age tale of self-destructive, adolescent hedonism, "Spring Breakers" is anchored in some sense of morality. We know what's right and we know what's wrong, but we're meant to relish the descent. Korine's style as exhibited in "Spring Breakers" is alien, at times it's more like a BBC documentary about the strange human rituals or like watching space junk re-enter the atmosphere and come plummeting to Earth, rather than a tale of four girls intent on maintaining wild abandon.

"The Beach Bum" is Korine's mad-cap series of cataclysmic events to push the unflappable inter-dimensional Moondog to his creative zenith. It's not concerned with the weight or significance of dramatic moments. Weddings, adultery, death, imprisonment (and "going on the lam"), these are stages of Moondog's descent to rock bottom. However, this is not "Leaving Las Vegas". Korine and McConaughey make this weird nihilistic life of altered states and homelessness invigorating.

Stefania LaVie Owen plays Heather, the daughter of Moondog and Minnie. Isla Fisher plays the street regal Minnie, luxuriating in their loose definition of marriage. Moondog is beckoned home to his palatial Miami from his Keys playground to attend his daughter's wedding; even if it is just in a totemic capacity. Moondog's role as the father of the bride is delaying proceedings from being late, grappling his prospective son in law's package to see if it's got the girth to keep his baby happy. That is not a sentence I ever could have imagined that I'd write, let alone explain.

Moondog and his wealthy wife Minnie dance away revelations that she's been having an affair with one of Moondog's close friend's Lingerie (played by Snoop Dogg). On a jetty with a satchel sized synthesiser, they use the pier as their elongated stage, and the picture fades to black. When they awaken, it's in the back of an ambulance. Minnie passes away, leaving Moondog her vast fortune on the condition that finally exercises his talent and writes a novel.

In so many other movies, Minnie's death would have become a central hurdle to overcome. We observe Moondog's pain (despite casually pounding away on any piece of obliging tail we see offered in front of him in the beginnings of the film) that Minnie would also have the same loose parameters around monogamy. We know that he stands to gain the most from her demise. Korine frames Moondog as one would a literal canine. Utterly motivated by self-satisfaction and totally devoid of malicious intent. Minnie's death is a calculating discomfort. That fade to black, however, results in an explosion of ambivalence that recalled a much more talked about scene in a vastly more culturally impactful film.

In Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time ... In Hollywood", Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) is on a boat with his wife. Sitting in a 60s style, orange neoprene wet suit, those horizontal oval-shaped goggles, nursing a spear gun. The word on Cliff is that he killed his wife, and Tarantino's mastery is forcing the audience to reconcile the Cliff that they know, with the Cliff that has come before. In "The Beach Bum", the fleeting nature of the scene, the propulsive consequences, the glimpse of frustration and possessive hurt, it begs the question that you're forced to file away. There's enough evidence to the contrary, so to speak. Hell Moondog begins to commemorate Minnie by wearing her clothes, disguising himself as a woman to evade one of the many attempts from law enforcement to capture him and enforce a stint in mandatory rehab.

The film essentially devolves into an exultant montage of Moondog running from the law and toward his fortune through a signpost after signpost of hilarious tour guides and self-serving acts. In and of itself, "The Beach Bum" quenches a thirst usually reserved for mind-altering substances. We don't want Moondog to be rich. We don't want Moondog to have the agency to make significant life decisions? We don't want him to be able to buy the fucking Florida Keys, but his behaviour does deserve someone to bestow him the keys to Florida.

This single quote can synthesise the Moondog philosophy;

"I mean, fuck, we're here to have a good time. I just wanna have a good time, until this shit's over, man. This life's gig a fucking rodeo and I'm gonna suck the nectar and fucking rawdog it till the wheels come off."

Someday, we'll be at the end of our tethers realised that we got the McConaughey movie rawdog we deserved and just couldn't remember.

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